Every Last Cent

12

IT WAS THE most peaceful scene; village girls practising the maypole dance with ribbons, folk feeding ducks on the White Hart pond, no rain for once. Couldn't be better. Dealers were chatting all about, readying for the auction at Bledsew's. I wasn't restful. Inside I was in turmoil, with the worst of all feelings.

Hesk was trying to get me to endorse some fake Georgian drawings – Roman women seducing lovers in baths, frolicking maidens at it under arboreal fronds. I was waiting for Mortimer. Hesk narks me, always trying something on and getting it wrong. If he'd only take trouble, he'd be a classy forger. His drawings were not bad, just copies of those rapacious Pompeii scenes.

'Your black-letter Gothic inscriptions are wrong, Hesk,' I told him. 'You included the word pornography in, see?'

'It is porn, Lovejoy!' he cried, the prospect of a fortune dwindling. Two dealers, Becky and her mate Tony who deal in Jacobean (approx) glassware (approx) sniggered.

Derision is the way dealers express sympathy with others.

'No, Hesk,' I said patiently. 'The word pornography wasn't coined until Dunglison put it in his medical dictionary in 1857.' Hesk had dated them all Pornography 1813-1816.

'Oh.' He looked close to tears. 'Should I change it?'

He left, glumly studying his drawings. Suddenly Mortimer was there beside me on the bench. I managed not to infarct at his abrupt manifestation.

'Keep your voice down,' I managed to say when my heart resumed. 'There's a dozen dealers about. What ghost painting?'

'You painted four, Lovejoy.' He gave me a second to adjust. 'The ghost was a lady.'

'I remember.' The portrait was of a seated woman, an oval canvas. Pretty good. I'd auctioned one, done three duplicates, and had eaten real food for almost two months.

'Didn't you sell one to your friend Ferdinand?' he asked.

'Children are the pits,' I told him, resigned. He looked puzzled.

Once, a pal of mine Ferd had the happiest life imaginable. Bonny wife, decent job, twins – pigeon pair, boy and girl – could life be better? One day hankies waved, and off the twins went to university. 'We're independent now,' they told their parents, beaming.

Ferd and Norma his missus sighed fondly. Brave children, off into the big wide world.

Peace in the old homestead! Not a bit of it. I met Ferd the following week and asked him for a lift.

'Can't, Lovejoy,' he said. 'No motor.'

The twins had returned carrying sacks of washing for Mum to do. 'They carried a sack of clinking pots,' Ferd told me gloomily. 'And two bicycles to be mended.' When challenged about this novel version of independence the twins said heatedly, "Hey, Dad, who's got the washing machine, tools, and the dishwasher?''

The visit was brief. They emptied the fridge of everything edible, ordered Ferd to fill his motor with petrol, promised to return at weekends, and drove away to continue being bravely independent in London's Soho, that well-known raw frontier. The daughter instantly shacked up with a penniless andromorph guitarist, her brother with a gorgeous lass hooked on anorexia who claimed, with a certain accuracy, to be a street juggler. Norma's washing load quadrupled, the bills became a Danegeld on the hapless Ferd. The twins' monetary demands soared. ('Hey, Dad, aren't we allowed to smoke, drink, have fun?' etc, etc.)

Ferd, once a Foreign Office diplomat, began to long for the halcyon days when his children had been completely parasitic infants at home while he slogged like a dog in London. 'They're so-say independent now, Lovejoy,' he told me wistfully, 'and I'm broke. Norma's out of her mind. We're worn out.'

Sadly, Ferd did the unthinkable. He cashed in his pension to open an antiques shop.

The horrible trade joke is, 'Leap off a cliff, play Russian roulette – but don't do anything really dangerous like going into antiques!' Except it isn't a joke. Recorded history is crammed with famous wars, but Man's unwritten odyssey is littered with the wreckage of failed antiques businesses. One of those was Ferd's. He had a nervous breakdown after bankruptcy. His children were outraged ('What on earth is Dad thinking of, falling ill when we're deprived?' etc). Norma now goes out cleaning, four zlotniks an hour, to maintain Ferd in his silent despond while the twins, now a sturdy, booze-swilling twenty-two years of age, smoke their heads off in the idle manner to which they have become accustomed. Occasionally I visit Ferd, teach him watercolours; I've heard it's a good cure-all. Doesn't work, of course. Usually I paint while he gazes in silence, and that's it. But a friend has to try.

'See what I mean?' I told Mortimer defiantly. 'Independence for some is parasitism to others.'

'I'm not a university student,' he pointed out quietly. 'I don't smoke or drink. I protect you more than you do me. And I'm not a twin.'

Doesn't it nark you when other folk are reasonable? One less troublesome zygote, however, was good news. I said this with bitterness. He took no notice.

'Just stop ruining the antiques trade, please. They're threatening me.'

'Sorry, Lovejoy. It's not fair. Dealers pretend everything's genuine.'

Give me strength. I gave him the bent eye.

'Isn't Ferd the man at Tolleshunt Knights? His wife used to wheel him down the water with a radio?'

'That's Ferd. Ruined!'

'Not now, Lovejoy. He's better.' Mortimer didn't quite smile. I had the uneasy feeling that I was being manipulated. Odd that he'd twice brought up the name of somebody he'd never known.

'Can't be. Ferd's gone doolally, prey to his offspring.' I said this pointedly, still irked at this sprog getting me in bad with that Mrs Eggers and her barmy scheme. 'I saw Ferd only last week.'

'Go and see him this week, Lovejoy. Follow the Rolls Royces.'

Which was how I came across a reincarnation, and some ugly bits of the jigsaw fell into place.

I hitched as far as Maldon, always easy to get to. There, I phoned Ferd. A startlingly bright Norma answered, gushed that she'd come for me. She arrived in an electric blue Rolls the size of our church. Humbly I got in.

'You don't look like a cleaning lady any more, love.'

She sparkled. You know the way women go when they're on top of the world? They become radiant, elated, their clothes priceless. They zoom down to twenty-four years of age when really they're over fifty. She dazzled. Except she'd dazzled me a week ago when she was in scrubber's clothes, and we'd made do with a tin of soup for the three of us. I wondered uneasily if my visit was superfluous.

'One thing, Lovejoy,' she said, concentrating on the steep hill down to Maldon's titchy river bridge. She blushed charmingly. 'Before we reach home. Ferd's made a miraculous recovery from depression. Totally fit. So whatever happened in the past between any two persons mustn't recur. You do see that?'

'Erm...' Being baffled is nothing new, but this was exceptional. First the Rolls, then a Cinderella transformation without the mice, and now Ferd has shazammed into wealth plus the Olympics?

'You mustn't, Lovejoy.'

I mustn't what? Then I twigged. She meant ravishment was out of the question. Ferd was hale and vigilant. We hadn't made smiles as routine, honestly. But Norma had utterly lost her spirits, gone from being comfortably off to eking out the pennies, her husband a broken man while she skivvied for neighbours. I didn't blame her for raping me while Ferd dozed and twitched in his deckchair. I was the only bliss she'd had. Back then, of course; no longer.

'No ravishing,' I translated. 'Right?' , She coloured deeper still. 'I was weak, Lovejoy.

Naturally I was grateful. You were the only friend who had the decency to stay loyal to Ferd while ...' et pious cetera.

Join those dots for the usual cop-out. I honestly don't understand why women think like this. They believe in words too much, assume that feelings have to be spoken aloud, every twinge detailed. The opposite is true, but they just don't get it.

Once, I was subjected to a long diatribe by a lady I'd only just met. I'd taken her a jump-up. This is a lovely antique baby chair with a little tray that stands on a small beautifully edged table so the chair can't fall off. Lift the baby down, and you have a table and chair set! The Victorian joiners of High Wycombe made these. They're still unbelievably cheap, a mere three hundred zlotniks in mint condition, though by the time you read this .. .

That particular lady spoke for a full hour, staring past me at the middle distance, gradually encroaching on my bit of her couch until we were virtually seated in the same spot. The inevitable happened, and we made smiles. See what I mean? Too many words, when a simple beckoning gesture would have done. Where was I? Being warned off Norma, by Norma.

'I understand, love. No groping.'

'Lovejoy! Must you say everything straight out?' Which from her . . .

We drove in silence the rest of the way, me the scruff, she the brilliantly lovely fashion goddess at the wheel of her cruiser. At Ferd's house I saw an instant transformation.

One of those huge Scandinavian wooden sheds had been erected by the dwelling. A new shingle drive had been laid. Notices proclaimed FERNORM ANTIQUES, INC in flashing neon. Two lasses dressed as Edwardian housemaids were busily enticing customers in from the main road while pretending to arrange antique furniture on the cloistered forecourt. A week ago, note, it had been the usual unkempt grassy shambles of the impoverished sinking classes. I wondered where the buildings and curved drives had sprung from. We alighted.

'Ferd's inside arranging antiques,' Norma said a little breathlessly, leading the way. A fortnight ago they couldn't afford to run their TV.

The maids chorused a welcome. Two dealers I recognized stalked among the antiques, hardly gave me a glance when I called a hearty wotcher.

'Hello, old friend!' Ferd boomed, advancing.

He too had changed. From a morose shaky old man he'd filled out, smartened, become the village squire in tweeds and plus-fours. Everything he'd ever dreamed of, in fact.

'Wotcher, Ferd. No painting session today, then?'

He boomed, actually boomed, a hearty guffaw and shook my hand in a grip of iron. I yelped, lacking manly pride.

'Heavens, no, Lovejoy. I'll show you some antiques, old fruit!'

As I followed I marvelled. Norma avoided my eye, said she needed to see the housekeeper, and left me to it. Servants, wealth, new buildings, a thriving antiques business, all in a matter of days?

'Look at these, Lovejoy!' Ferd was intoning. 'Who says you can't make a splendid living from antiques, hey?' He actually said that, Heyyy? like calling the first round at boxing.

'Well, I do,' I said, but it was a weak quip. I stared.

The main shed – grander than the word tells – was about twenty strides square, crammed with antiques. There were two small back rooms. One was an office, the other he opened with a flourish.

'Seen anything like this, Lovejoy?'

There's a saying among antique dealers that 'before 1750 nothing came out of Ireland, but that after 1750 everything did'. Meaning that older Irish antiques are virtually nonexistent, whereas after the mid-eighteenth century you find plenty of Irish artefacts.

Irish furniture isn't to my liking, not unless you like massive masks on your Georgian yew-wood furniture, weird faces carved on to table edges and the like. They went in for bog oak, even dyed mahogany to resemble it. Can't understand it myself, but whatever turns you on. The room was crammed with Irish furniture. I gulped, sweated, felt my chest thump and my hands go clammy. It was genuine. I reeled, made the door and onto the grass, inhaling cooler air.

He followed.

'What, Lovejoy?' He hadn't lost confidence. 'You're not saying it isn't genuine?'

'No, Ferd.' I gradually came to. 'Antiques do that to me, set me off.' I edged away from the shed, glancing back at it as I did so. The place must have cost him a fortune. The Rolls, the assistants, Norma's clothes. The main room was also thickly strewn with mixed antiques and junk, fifty-fifty. I was witnessing a resurgence, a miracle. 'Where'd you get the pier tables?' There'd been two.

'Oh, around. Got a backer.'

He smiled modestly, waved, and a maidservant approached with a chilled bottle of white wine and two glasses. Ferd led the way to a wrought-iron table with matching chairs. We sat. He raised his brogues, placed the heels on a chair, graciously allowed the lass to light his massive Cuban cigar.

'You'd need a backer, to afford them.'

Pier in antiques doesn't mean that thing sticking out of a seaside town into the sea, for the populace to stroll and take the air. It's the architectural term for a bit of the wall between two windows in your withdrawing room. From Queen Anne's time on, ladies became specially concerned with it as a feature. So 'pier glasses' were produced by London craftsmen. These were mirrors especially designed to occupy that wall space and give an illusion of space. A lady's talent could be gauged by her adept use of furnishings that didn't make her parlour piers look daft. So pier tables came into being, small semicircular pieces that stood against the pier, unfolding into round tables with a superimposed leaf. And very lovely they are. Now, in Ireland, walls of Dublin's town houses lent themselves to slightly different pier tables, so you find 'typically Irish'

(meaning exquisitely rare) pier tables that are more of an ellipse than half a circle. Find one in mahogany, mint, you're into your next world cruise, three times round. Find a pair, you can retire.

'Got a superb backer, Lovejoy!' He tasted the wine, nodded so the serf could withdraw to her slavery. 'See my potato rings? Two!'

'Aye. You've done well, mate.'

Dealers call them that, but they're properly termed dish rings. They're never much to look at, just a curved circlet of silver a few inches tall. You put them on tables then lodge your hot serving dishes on top, to stop the table getting scorched. What goon first called them potato or spud rings I don't know. They're hollow, of course, the silver quite thin, cut to depict flowers, birds and villeins doing their stuff. One dealer I knew sold one cheaply, thinking it was merely a dressing-table stand for ladies' necklaces.

While Ferd expounded on life's gracious turns of fortune I heard motors drive up, car doors slam. Norma came to sit with us. I noticed her gold ring, her lovely sapphire and diamond. She'd had to pawn them three months since. Now they were back. Affluence is as affluence does. She looked brilliant. I wanted to eat her, but the thought of chewing her thighs honestly never crossed my mind.

'Who's the backer, Ferd?' I asked.

He smiled and wagged a finger roguishly. 'Now, now, Lovejoy.'

'Sorry.'

You don't ask three things of any dealer: how much, where from, and who else. (Why, is always self-explanatory, for we all know why, or so we believe.) Norma was smiling. I noticed she'd donned a lovely cold green pendant in gold. Risky, but on her effective. The gem was demantoid, a semi-precious garnet. (God, how I hate that term. You wouldn't call a diamond a semi-opal, or dawn a semi-day, so why are gemstones called semi-precious? We think of everything as money, that's why. I reckon it's an insult to gemstones.)

Demantoid: think of an emerald trying hard to be peridot, wash out more than half of the colour you have left, and there you have it. I love demantoid. It's actually a very pale clear green variety of andradite, but has a luscious lustre. Heaven knows why women don't go more for this exquisite stone, but they don't. Maybe they don't like the name. She caught me looking and had the grace to blush. She carolled a covering laugh.

'Lovejoy's noticed my new pendant, Ferdinand!' She fingered it. 'I got it from a maiden aunt who died.'

Possibly in the Soviet Union, when there was such a country? Because that's where demantoid and andradites mostly come from. The gold mount was devised to resemble niello, a Russian form of decoration.

'God rest her,' I said politely, as if I believed her. Ferd looked amused, full of himself.

Some pleb called out for him and he waved nonchalantly. Mortimer was right; this was a transformation the like I'd never seen. From defeated relic to a mercantile prince all in a week.

'Can I help, Ferd?' I asked. When I'm broke I start whining. I'm rubbish. 'I'll sort your incoming. I'll divvy for you,' I added recklessly, though it always gives me a terrible headache, sorting genuine antiques from fake.

'No, thanks, Lovejoy.' He rose, stretched, waved to his minions that he was coming.

'I've got everything I need.' And strode off to his burgeoning empire, monarch of all.

'Leaving two green bottles hanging on the wall, love.' Norma said, 'Shhh. I told you, Lovejoy. No more.'

'I'm glad he's got a money partner. Is it permanent?'

A shadow crossed her face. You can always tell. No clouds in the skies, yet something darkened her eyes very like a portent. It happens more with women's eyes than men's, because women look close. Men gaze afar. 'Yes. As near as we can tell.'

'At great cost, love? Or does he come free?'

'It's a partnership, for heaven's sake!' She rose angrily. 'I knew you'd start the minute I heard you on the phone. You'd better go now. And take your ridiculous daubs with you!

You're never anything but trouble!'

Off she stalked, leaving me alone. My ridiculous daubs? She meant my watercolours that I tried to cheer Ferd up with when he was ailing. No need of them now. I looked after her. She even moved alluringly in high heels on her greensward, which takes some doing. I waited until she was gone, then cadged a lift back to town with Openers, a shabby little geezer from the street barrows. He makes lunatic starting bids at auctions to rile the auctioneers. 'Penny-farthing for openers, guv,' is his usual squawk.

He never laughs, though others do.

On the way I asked him what he'd bought from Ferd's magnificent new storehouse.

'Nil,' he groused, surly. 'Where the hell could I get money to buy that sort of kite?' Kite is antique-speak for quality. 'Especially with Sandy and Mel buying everything for Ferd that's not nailed down.'

'Eh?' Now, Ferd and Norma hated Sandy, wouldn't do business with him for a knighthood, yet here was Openers saying that Randy Sandy was Ferd's new backer. A headache began.

'Here, Lovejoy. Can you help me?'

'Hardly, wack. I'm on my uppers.'

'It's my wife. I promised I'd pay for her wedding if she'll divorce me. Let me say we're doing some deal, eh?'

'Oh, right,' I said, blank. 'Er, it'll be her third husband?'

'Course,' he said, like it was the most usual thing in the world. 'She's fixed on splicing with him before Bonfire Plot. She says it'll be unlucky otherwise.'

'Okay, if it'll get you out of a hole, Openers.'

'Ta, Lovejoy. You're a pal. I owe you.'

Some debtor. Openers had never been solvent. I've always had an eye for a bargain.

He dropped me at the war memorial, so I decided to go and scrounge from Alanna, a reporter who broadcasts falsehoods to the sealands on local stations, which only goes to show how desperately worried I was.